Key Takeaways
- A 5-part Gi BJJ DVD instructional covering side control pinning and attacks.
- Impeccably organized to include far side, near side, and North-South attacks, as well as foundational principles of pinning.
- Contains a volume with rolling footage and commentary featuring the subject.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 8 out of 10.
RAYRON GRACIE SIDE CONTROL DVD AVAILABLE HERE!!!
If you truly want to understand how pinning works, you could do a lot worse than picking up the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD. This Gi instructional outlines the competitive game of one up-and-coming top competitor bearing the Gracie name, who has over a decade of competitive experience under his belt.
The Role of Dynamic Top Control in Jiu-Jitsu
While playing guard is fun, every time you end up outside it in BJJ, things instantly become a lot less fun and a lot more concerning. Automatically, this leads to the realization that top positions in BJJ are better than bottom ones, and you should aim to get to one and secure it for as long as you can whenever you’re rolling, especially when you’re competing.
Getting past the guard is a problem to solve on another occasion, so for now we’ll focus on the much more tricky retention of top pinning position, as we’re going to be looking into the Rayron Gracie Side Control DVD shortly, trying to figure out whether it can help in this regard.
Suppose we loosely define pinning in BJJ as the inability of the bottom person to stand up, whether kneeling, half-kneeling, or completely on their feet. In that case, it is much easier to achieve it compared to trying to keep someone with their back to the ground for an extended period of time. This second task is impossible, whereas there are different ways to achieve the first one.
Thinking about pins in a broad manner such as this, allows you to think about controlling them without the restrictions of trying to stop someone from moving at all. This opens up the possibility of dynamic control, which, on top of improving pins, as defined above, also opens up traditional submission attacks more than trying to just lay on someone.
A Modern-Day Gracie Competitor
Rayron Gracie is the sole survivor of the Gracie competitor’s legacy, as he is the only member of the family currently tearing it up at the highest levels of BJJ, albeit he sticks mostly to IBJJF-governed events.
Born in 2001 as the son of the late Ryan Gracie, he grew up in the Gracie household, taken care of by his grandfather Robson Gracie after his father passed away. Coming from a very strong branch of the family, Ryan’s brothers including Renzo and Ralph Gracie, who are still known in the MMA and BJJ World despite not having competed for decades.
Rayron has so far taken care of the Gracie legacy in an impressive fashion, winning the Worlds and Pans multiple times at every belt level. He conquered bronze at the 20204 IBJJF Worlds in his first outing as a black belt, demonstrating the same tenacity and aggressiveness we witnessed in his father and uncles back in the day.
Rayoron keeps moving around the world, learning from every Gracie member he can, from Renzo to the UK-based Roger Gracie. He got his black belt from his cousin, the legendary Kyra Gracie in 2023, and has all the makings of a future huge name in BJJ.
Rayron has also managed to find time to launch a few instructionals as he keeps preparing for the best Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitions in the world. His latest instructional, the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD is what we’ll be looking into today.
Detailed Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD Review
The Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD is a five-volume instructional that focuses on Gi Jiu-Jitsu, particularly on the different ways to pin people from side control and North-South. The full running length of the DVD, including the rolling commentary volume is over 3 hours.
Part 1 – Pinning
A few carefully selected chapters on the very essentials of side control positioning to achieve the task of pinning kick the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD into gear. This portion only has around 20 minutes of material covering how to block the opponent’s hips from side control, which effectively delivers a pin.
The final couple of other chapters in this volume go over the relationship between side control and North-South, and how to seamlessly transition without losing that all-important pin of the hips or shoulders. Rayron also overviews a few different staples of retaining side control by preventing guard recovery from the bottom person.
Part 2 – Far Side Strategies
Once the introduction and basic principles are out of the way, Rayoron jumps straight into his competition-tested system of side control pinning, spending the entire second volume talking about far side control and attacks.
He begins with the underhook battle, explaining how to block the bottom person from getting it using positioning and a bunch of sneaky moves such as shoulder chokes and wristlocks. I’d single out the armpit grip, and the options it provides for opening up armbar attacks without sacrificing pinning control.
This volume of the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD features a bunch of arm-locking submissions, such as armbars, Kimuras, Amaricanas, more wristlocks than anyone should know, and an inverted straight armlock straight out of Marcelo Garcia’s playbook.
A couple of lapel chokes and a suffocation finish wrap things up, bringing the total running time of this volume over the one-hour mark.
Part 3 – Near Side Dynamics
The third part of the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD switches focus to the near side, the one that most people kind of dismiss in favor of the far side. Rayron provides minutes of material that clearly demonstrates how versatile attacking from the near side can be.
After a short intro, Gracie goes over several ways to completely isolate the near-side arm, basically showing you how to pin the arm while also pinning the torso. the arm then acts as an axis you can use for transitions and finishes.
In that regard, Rayore goes over transitions to both sides, which means mount and North-South, while using armbar threats as a checkpoint between the different positional pins. There are also elaborate lapel attacks that include a choking threat, but I feel these are too over the top to be practical.
Part 4 – North-South Essentials
After exploring the near and far side of side control top pining, the fourth volume is all about the Rayron Gracie North South system with the Gi. After the mandatory intro about the position, Gracie once again focuses a lot on grips, talking about underhooks and overhooks as they interchange to allow for optimal pinning.
Once that’s out of the way, attacks follow, with the position offering a myriad of chokes and armlocks. Kimura lock setups and variations feature heavily, extending towards armbars and leading to different finishes. Choke-wise, the paper cutter choke is the star, creating a swift bac take option in case the bottom person is defending particularly stubbornly.
Part 5 – Rolling Commentary
The final part of the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD includes rolling footage and later, commentary by Rayron on where, why, and how he uses everything he demonstrated in earlier volumes. These types of endings to BJJ DVDs are by far the best, according to me, as we get to see exactly how things work when resistance is involved.
How to Learn Flow Pinning
It is apparent from our Rayron Gracie Side Control DVD review that retaining a top pin from side control (I include North-South as a side control variation) is anything but simple. If you only try to focus on preventing the bottom person from moving, while staying stationary, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Remember that pinning is easy when the bottom person has to worry about you submitting them or scoring more points rather than simply trying to hold them down. Moving seamlessly between far and near side attacks, the North-South variation, and including back and mount transition threats at all times keeps the bottom person struggling to fight them off, which effectively keeps you in a long-lasting pin.
Achieving such diversity is not easy, and the best way to approach practicing pins this way is to pick two things to do, and cycle between them until you’re ready to introduce more. Drilling near side attacks and North-South transition is a great way to quickly improve Gi pinning, just like the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD demonstrates.
FULL DOWNLOAD: RAYRON GRACIE SIDE CONTROL DVD
Master the Top!
While you will never be able to pin everyone indefinitely, you’ll definitely end up pining and submitting more people from side control using the information in the Rayron Gracie Side Control & North South Mastery DVD. it is a great resource for Gi competitors, containing invaluable direct experiences that Rayron has gathered from competing for over a decade.
I’d recommend it to everyone struggling with side control, as understanding flow pinning goes a long way towards improving your overall BJJ top game even if you don’t compete.
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